What started out originally as a strategy RPG crossover of the Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei series ended up taking quite a dramatic twist early in development and ended up forging a more unique identity in the form of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, a Persona-style turn-based RPG that has its roots soaked in anime and Japanese pop culture. Who could have seen that coming?

Even if you’re a huge fan of those respective series, there’s a good chance you’ve had intentions but never got around to playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE when it originally launched on Wii U in the West in 2016, because not a lot of people did. Regardless of its high review scores, the combination of the Wii U's low install base and the fact that many fans were expecting a different Fire Emblem/Shin Megami Tensei experience overall just didn’t bode well for sales. Thankfully, this Japanese pop-idol of a game is getting called back on stage for an encore on Switch, and it’s bringing some new content along with it.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is a joint effort between Atlus, Intelligent Systems and Nintendo, and is set in a fictional version of modern-day Tokyo in which humans can unlock hidden creative energy within themselves known as Performa. This Perfoma power can then be used in conjunction with beings from another world known as Mirages. Most of these Mirages just want to steal your Performa and watch your world burn, but a select few actually want to help protect it, and will aid you in battle.

You play as Itsuki Aoi, a high school student who learns to control his Performa to help his friends take on the overwhelming force of mirages. But Itsuki and his friend Tsubasa quickly learn that this newfound power of theirs comes with a slight caveat; to enhance their skills and continue fighting they have to dive headfirst into the Japanese entertainment industry. Throughout their journey into stardom, they’ll meet a wide cast of characters who’ll help enhance their pop-idol abilities and join in the fight against the mirages.

As we’ve stated before, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE borrows elements both from the Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei series. Characters from Fire Emblem take the form of your alley mirages like Chrom of Awakening and Caeda of Shadow Dragon, you’ll acquire Fire Emblem weapons through the game and fans will even notice the level-up jingle has carried over, too.

As for Shin Megami Tensei, the references and comparisons are a bit thicker; the majority of skills your characters use (Zio, Dia, Bufu, etc) have all been carried over, battles take place in an alternate dimension known as the Idolasphere which is similar to how battles go down in Persona, there’s a special area you use to enhance the abilities of your characters and mirages which has a blue door just like the Velvet Room and there’s even a convenience store themed around the Jack Brothers. There are more references sprinkled throughout the adventure that we could mention, but we’ll save some for you to discover on your own.

One other large factor that pulls this even closer to a Shin Megami Tensei or Persona title is its turn-based battle system. In battle, you’ll have control of three different characters who are all buddied up with their own friendly neighbourhood mirage (think demons or personas) who end up morphing into weapons for you to wield. Each character can do all the standard turn-based battle moves – attack, guard, use an item or a skill (magic) – but one unique feature is the Session Attack which allows each character to string together extra attacks when you hit an enemy with its weakness, depending on if your teammates have learned the corresponding Session Skill. As you level up, your characters and partake in side quests, you’ll gain new Session Skills that will allow your teammates to jump in more often. It definitely helps keep battles interesting to watch and fun to play.

However, something that is very plainly covered up is the darker tone often found in Fire Emblem or Shin Megami Tensei games. There are some dreary moments here and there, but those have sort of taken a back seat to a world full of bubbly and excentric anime-style characters, pop idols and the music they create. It can be a little eye-opening for anyone who doesn’t really watch anime or isn’t aware of the culture behind it, but if you can get past the idea of Tiki calling you her big brother, there’s a lot to love tucked into this game.

Plus, anyone who’s played through Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE on Wii U will be happy to hear this new Encore edition on Switch has a few new features that could pique your interest. Encore includes a new dungeon, new songs and music videos, new costumes and a few previously unplayable characters who will jump in and join your battle with the Session Attacks.

The main playable characters, the story and the overall identity that wraps around Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE are entirely it's own and in many ways, it reminds us of Disney's and Square's first collaboration, Kingdom Hearts. You have some characters and elements you remember from their past games, but things aren’t the same. Both Disney and Square took a few key ingredients from their own franchises and planted them with the seeds of something new and watched it blossom into the behemoth of a franchise it is today (which is kind of a confusing mess, but that’s beside the point).

You don’t have to be a huge fan who’s played every Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei title under the sun to enjoy this game; you just have to be a fan of a good RPG. Atlus and Nintendo worked together to create something fresh and new, and sure, it may not appeal to everyone with its heavy anime/pop idol influence, but the love and attention to detail that went into this game is apparent and we’re happy to see Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore join the Switch's neverending library.

When Zion isn’t making videos for our YouTube channel, you’re likely to find him out playing shows with his band Constance, or out and about hunting down the latest gaming deals. He swears the sealed Labo Kits sitting in his closet are going to be worth “big bucks” someday...

Really quite excited for this. I never did pick up the original despite being a huge fan of Fire Emblem, SMT and Persona. Don’t really give two hoots about censorship or whatever, it’s an RPG and I can live without getting the chance to see the girls in swimsuits.

Ah I can’t wait for this. I played about 10 hours of the Wii U version, but I got distracted by other stuff and never finished it. I loved what I played, though, and can’t wait to give it another shot! Less than 2 weeks left!

This is still my favourite game on the WiiU. It's weird and jPop is not quite my thing, but the mechanics were super solid and the presentation was just off the charts. The whole game was just build to be a fun ride all-around. The somewhat more serious moments only served to contrast and thus underline the otherwise upbeat nature of the narrative.

I also ended up enjoying quite a few of the songs or soundtrack in general. Also, I LOVED that I was not some kind of prince/ss out to save the world/kingdom from some ancient evil. It was an actual relief to be treated to a different setting. SMT has always been an outlier in this regard for the most part (didn't really appreciate the setting in SMT V on those terms, but whatever), but it was neat to see an SMT game going for yet a different tone and setting. After all, tonally TMS#FE could not be more different from the likes of Nocturne.

Last but not least, just huge props to Atlus for the way the handled the turn-based battles. It never felt like a turn-based game, watching your inputs unfold on screen and that is about the highest compliment I can make a game like this. Sadly, even though Persona 5 was great and had a solid presentation, it did decidely not live up to the standards set in TMS#FE when it came to battle animation. I hope SMT VI, of which we haven't heard anything in a long time, but then again TMS#FE was silent for years on end as well, can take a huge load of inspiration from the way TMS#FE handled itself in combat.

Long story short, after plenty of deliberation, I came to the conclusion that I'm going to double dip on it. I'm not keen on double-dipping on WiiU games, which also stopped me from getting Hyrule Warriors again, but this deserves to be supported beyond what I already did.

@cool_boy_mew Not going to touch that whole "censorship" thing yet again (ben there, dan tha ^^), but as a SMT fan - which includes games like Persona, but is not limited to the same - and as a Fire Emblem fan I did appreciate this game alot, and definitely more so than I ever thought I would based on the premise and the trailer and the reviews I had checked beforehand.

Personally, I was very disappointed by FE Three Houses, as the game offered zero challenge and I strongly disliked all the additions they offered off the field of battle, but from what I can tell, most people liked what they did with the series. I cannot for the life of me guess why then, they wouldn't like this, as TMS#FE presentation and tone clearly helped shape Three Houses in this regard.

I got the Wii U version for Christmas last year, and I absolutely adored it. It's definitely a weird result as far as what you'd expect from a Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem crossover, but it really works. Ignore the censorship trolls, and I hope people give this game the shot it deserves. It's one of my favorite JRPGs.

I havnt played it and even though im not a fan of J-pop and this idol culture thing, i always thought the game looked very interesting, it just seems to have something about the world/mood, that magic that will let you get lost in the game, reminding me somewhat of old school RPGs and old school anime

I never got this one on the Wii U because I wasn't into Atlus games yet. Nevertheless, when the port was announced and I learned that it is focused on idols I lost interest sadly. The idol culture does nothing for me.

@Harmonie I does nothing for me either, I did not care about it before I played and enjoyed SMT#FE and I do not care about it now having played through the game on the WiiU. I'm still looking forward to picking this up yet again, supporting it once more and eventually playing it again, as well for the additional content.

I'm just saying that interest in idols is not prerequisite to enjoying this game, none at all. It might add to the experience, or it might not. I cannot say, but having zero interest has no bearing on the fact, that you might have a good time with it. Just saying.

When this was first released I didn't pay much attention to it outside of "oh, it has something to do with Fire Emblem". Most of the """marketing""" and hype for it was basically just various ways of saying "it's a SMT and Fire Emblem crossover" which for the longest time just begged the question of "yea, but, what is it?". What the actual premise or gameplay was like seemingly never got a mention and to what extent this was a crossover I don't believe I came across. If marketing and articles about the game at the time didn't see the need to elaborate on any of this, I wasn't willing to put in the effort to find out, which I think is a big reason it didn't sell since I can see that being a universal thought process.

Then this article comes along. It's taken since release for me to really have an idea of what the game is and (as somebody who has never played SMT) it seems like a SMT game first and foremost by a wide margin with the Fire Emblem aspect of the 'crossover' being more akin to calling Spy Kids 3D a crossover movie because Machete was in it for a minute...Essentially, it comes across that if you took out the Fire Emblem aspect, nothing of importance would change.

I'm in the same boat as @alpha5099 with the Wii U original, I got the game last Christmas (Christmas 2018, not to be confused with 2019), and it ended up becoming my favorite Wii U game. I'll definitely be playing it again.

I like gaming because gaming is for the experience. This will give you a different experience than what you’re used to but still enough familiarity that you won’t feel alienated from the traditional RPG mechanics.

Try it and don’t be a whiner because of the above excuses, especially censorship. You want to see boobs and such all you have to do is Google it.

@NinjaWaddleDee They have virtually zero bearing on anything. The only thing I can imagine being impacted at all, not mechanically of course, but tonally, would be the 3rd dungeon. I imagine it was a bit of different experience originally, which is not to say it was necessarily better, but different.

I would have prefered the original designers vision for sure, but then again, we all know that the Japanese way of sexualising characters is often considered distasteful in the west. The hipocrisy here is so obvious, that it's almost phyiscally painfully to even think about it, but it is just the way it its. Nintendo had no good options here. Not censoring it, would have called to plan all the All-otakus-are-pedos crowd. Making the changes they did, called to plan the censorship-is-Hitler is crowd. There is no pleasing everyone with content such as this. I'm amazed - to be quite - frank, this game exists at all. A decade ago or more it chances to ever have been localized would be been slim to none. Only the severe drought of content on the WiiU made it possible. I'm super grateful for that, as this carried thru to all kinds of games, like say Fatal Frame (which had it's own racey-content issues as it happend).

BUt yeah, some people can't see it that. They rather have the game with a bit more cleavage or the change to peak some underwear on what is in the original an underage young woman ... or not have the game AT ALL. Obviously, that is bonkers, utterly so, but by definition, it is impossible to reason with a fundamentalist. This is not about reason, but about a particular belief system if you will. It's about purity above all. Compromise is evil by its very nature. No point arguing it. Trust me, I tried

I bought almost all exclusive games for the Wii U but skipped on this because i had no clue what it was. Took me until recently to realize it was a SMT game, it never clicked for me that #FE stood for Fire Emblem, and the ads i saw made it look like a music game of sorts instead of a jrpg.

I am now very intrigued and considering pre-ordering this version of the game, but need to do more homework on the systems for the game.

Edit: after a couple youtube vids, I'm getting this. It's unlikely I will play it anytime soon due to my backlog, but does not seem like a game that will drop in price within a year and now I want to vote with my wallet for it's success.

If you get so incredibly upset about female video game characters getting slightly more clothes on their bodies and getting their ages changes to 18 instead of 16 you might need to re-think your priorities.

As for me I absolutely LOVE the Wii U version and will be getting this Day One! 😁

Well one thing’s for sure, I’m definitely more excited about the game this time around than last time now that I understand it a bit more. Censorship is not an issue for me here 🤷‍♂️ Sorry, not jumping on your bandwagon, ya’ll.

OMG not this again. Don’t condemn censorship because you might upset the ‘Right on politically correct crowd’. They get touchy if you ask for the uncensored version . Oops I’ve just noticed they are all ready here.

@BakaKnight I skipped double-dipping on Hyrule Warriors (prefered FE Warriors anyways) and Bayonetta 1+2 (3 is already happening), so I am gonna support this again, hoping as well that it'll get a sequel of some sorts. SMT has plenty of viability when it comes to spin-offs. The series is well known for that, so there is hope.

Having said that, I would have wished for more additions as well, to entice me to actually play my Switch copy sooner rather than later. Mostly though, I wish there was like an upgrade progam, that allowed to pay a fee for games like this and all the other WiiU exclusives to be carried over AND add a savegame transfer as well. One reason I saw no way to pay for Hyrule Warrior again was ... time. I spend alot of time in the game already. Starting from scratch was just not an option.

Here I wish I could go straight to NG+, but alas, I might play the game twice, but I'll never see NG+ as it is ^^

I didn't complete thisvgame, but I did enjoy what I played. It's obvious that a lot of time and energy went into making the game.It's a weird mix, but the mix works well and it is an enjoyable experience. I will be double dipping 🤪

@Ralek85 I agree with so much of what you said. The only point I disagree with is that localization of the game was made possible by the WiiU drought. This was one of the games promoted as part of the original onslaught E3 showcase with what turned out to be most of the games that would come to WiiU from Nintendo, back when they didn't even know what genre it was going to be and that it was going to be an idol-themed game. After they'd already promised "SMTxFE" from when it was on the pre-drawing boards, they were kind of on the hook to deliver something, since it was announced at an NA show of all places...

It's a curious case of a game that was announced before they even know what it was when the ink on the agreement wasn't even dry, then a few revisions later, somehow, approved a theme change nobody would have guessed, and then had a drought that mandated following through with it as promised in all regions.

@YozenFroghurt Can't speak to NG+, but on my 1st playthrough I did not have to do much grinding. I tend to be meticulous in my exploration, so maybe I get more encounters in anyways, but I definitely played SMT games that were more grindy. Also about any and all other SMT games felt more grindy, due to the simple fact, that they presentation was stale by comparison.

I felt with the right combination of skills, you can get away with alot in this game. Yeah, sure sometimes, you'll end up circle rezzing and you are overreliant on a certain ability, but it is entirely doable and I like games where I can comfortable edge along at the lowest level possible and compensate with a well adapted tactical approach - instead of just brute forcing my stats. Sadly, despite my reverence for the genre, most jRPG simply lack the tactical depth to do that. Most of the time, it breaks down to grind or to utterly exploiting some particularly gamebreaking mechanic. There is rarely any middle ground.

I remember folks complaining about Resonance of Fate. Which in fact was a grindy game by nature for sure, no denying that, but the combat system was well thought-out so that combat was engaging and it if mastered allowed you to breeze by obstacles someone else would spend a afternoon grinding past.

It had an actual skill ceiling of sorts, which ... hardly any jRPG has sadly

I'll probably dust off my Switch and finish it. I have to play the newest Shovel Knight DLC on it too and a few rounds of Super Mario 3D World would be fun as well.

I might even buy it on Switch if it is uncensored or the Japanese version is playable in English. I didn't really care about the censorship but if an uncensored version is easily available I will always prefer it.

@nessisonett "Don’t really give two hoots about censorship" yor the reason people suffer under Socalist Dictatorships like China ,North Korea,Cuba,Cambodia.I know you don't care about Freedom but people have the right to be perveted ,angry,and stupid as long as they don't hurt anyone else and you are infringing on that right.

@NEStalgia Yeah, that's true, but the fact that THIS game made it over was in some part due to the drought ... By that time, most people had forgotten about a supposed SMTxFE cross-over (it was what? 2 or 3 years silence?), it name had changed and it was not really recognizeable in any particular way as said originally announced SMTxFE game. Plus, it had very little lift in terms of elements of FE left and it was VERY japanese, more so than any SMT or FE game before it.

It was deeply steeped in Japanese culture, maybe even more so than Persona ever was, I'd say, with a focus not just on idol culture but also stuff like Kamen Rider for instance.

So it was super japanese and kinda racey and basically billed as 1st party Nintendo game, covering not one but two (at the time still) niche IPs.

I mean, yes, maybe you are right, and this was just Nintendo basically "keeping their promise", but I dunno ... maybe.

I decided to pull the trigger on this, but only because i'm using free gift cards I got at christmas to pay for it. It sounds like the game has a very polarizing fan base either people love it or hate it. I don't like the whole censorship thing, but I've heard it's worth looking past that to play. Guess it's easiest to make up my own mind once I get into it.

Nintendo cultists downvoting and telling weebs to stop complaining about a weeb game removing weeb things and features sure is interesting. Might be the ResetEra folks in the comment section.

You can tell the target consumers for this game that they’re “entitled whiners and complainers” all you want people, your hardcore defense of it wont make the already ultra niche game any less of a flop it most certainly will be. Just because all of you are such submissive little puppies, doesn’t mean you can insult others that they have a differing point of view from yours. 🙃

@Itachi2099 I hear ya. Way to stand up to whatever imagined slight and/or authority by not buying a videogame. You make it sound like an act of ... I dunno, civil disobedience, almost heroic. I mean, sure nice to see it that way, but I do not quite see how it relates to reality such as it is. Honestly, I don't get how "submissive" is even a term that could come up on an issue like this.

The Kingdom Hearts of Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei? That is both stupid and makes absolutely no sense, the former is a repetitive nonsensical button masher and ain't really representative of either Disney or Final Fantasy as per the most recent titles while the latter are higher caliber RPG's with actual quality

And yeah people who didn't like it the first time won't like it now so you can freely move on instead of complaining yet again, the ones who can get past its looks or flaws will probably find an enjoyable experience with the mindset of being its own thing with light references to SMT and FE

@tobibra yet you have a professor layton avatar, don't you know that the early games censored a lot of puzzles from the japanese version, and how the EU versions in turn censored both NA puzzles and Luke's voice?

@First_Amendment Ah yes, because changing characters’ ages to 18 instead of 16 is equatable to removal of human rights and lack of free internet access. The difference between here and North Korea is that if you really are hard set on looking at schoolgirl boobs then there’s something called Google. It’s not as if Japan don’t ‘censor’ games either, Mortal Kombat 11 isn’t even sold there due to the violence. It’s just differences in culture, if you really want that version of the game then there are ways.

@KBuckley27 It could sell better than whaty the Wii U version did. But it won't sell in the millions, I mean there are a lot of people who hate the it already because of the censorship, and also because, like you said, the J pop idol non-sense. Not every gamer is an anime fan

@Mijzelffan, I know they edit puzzles and names yes. I started playing Layton before I cared about censorship, now I own both the Japanese versions and European English version of the games and all the puzzles except possible NA exclusives, any exclusives from Japanese phone games and some if there were any in those Level 5 gold and platinum releases. I only own silver.

Just to get back on topic, I did actually get the Wii U version of TMS#FE, and enjoyed it then. Was actually my favorite Wii U game. Its actually one of the games that made me start caring about censorship in the first place.

This game is good. I hope it sells 2 million copies. It’s so weird and and fun and any sensible RPG lover would pick it up regardless of controversy. You will be giving yourself a great disservice if you do not. To each his or her own. False out rage or better yet dumb out rage. Has reached epic heights. Politics is in sports now and now it is video games. Yawn this world is so annoying.

I played it a little on WiiU back a few years ago and found it to be an enjoyable mash up. With that said its just a strange ar$e game. I mean if you like FF-X2 then you might like this. Its just JPOP madness although it is well done sporting nice anims, battle admins and a catchy soundtrack. Its just an odd game and its like a niche game like a lot of Altus games but its an even smaller niche because if you can't stand JPOP and Idol culture then take it won't matter that its sort of like Persona.

I am just too much of a FE purist and when this was announced very early in WiiU life I had such hopes for a FE 4x4 SRPG on WiiU so when this came out it really honked me off because it was nothing like SMT or FE. Sooooo…..if you like Altus JRPG and want FE fan service, and like JPOP then this is a well produced and fun game, if all that is too much then for god sakes just get FE3H (A straight up SRPG masterpiece) or one of the many JRPGs on Switch.....like Ni No Kuni, FF12, or Xeno2 which are all better games and don't require a dive into JPOP wonkism.

Heard about the change of course before. I don't recall reading the exact doubts, but one might dare a guess that at some point Atlus thought they were shaping up a Devil Survivor with FE characters. And great as the latter dilogy is, if they weren't in the mood to go there again, it's not ours to chastise them. Although it's ironic that they ended up with something more comparable to Persona instead - considering that Persona games themselves have yet to visit Nintendo hardware outside the EO hybrid.

The game's firmly on my radar, and I hope not to jinx this purchase months away like I did with Pokemon Sword (which is loaded and launched at the time of writing, at last). I fully acknowledge I'm getting myself into a quagmireof a backlog by starting so many lengthy games at once (hey, I still "resist" a number of purchased titles in the field, including Child of Light in the flesh!), but what can I say? JRPGs are my big weakness.😆 And this one was among the certain games that, all by themselves, would have made me buy a Wii U if I could expect to use that Wii U during work periods. The way things are, it's already one of my most anticipated 2020 Switch titles. Yes, censorship is always a bummer, but I guess Nintendo doesn't seem ready to 18+ a title closely connected to its long-running Teen-rated IP (ironically, Three Houses is 18+ on Russian eShop, but I do suspect which part of our neighbour's legislation prompted this😏). There's still too much of the game and story left to miss for me.

I was going to wait for this on the Switch but recently grabbed the original on Wii U instead; I'm not too fussed about the added content in the Encore version, plus it's hard to argue with paying only $20 for a new game of this magnitude. I haven't played it yet, but its general quirkiness and the fact it's saturated in Japanese culture drew me in. I'm also a Fire Emblem fan.

Bought this game when it came out, and enjoyed it well enough. It did NOT scratch any bit of my Fire Emblem itch. It has a few influences from Fire Emblem, but it's more Persona than anything. The battle system is good, it's chock-full of Waifu's, and the characters are likeable.

If you're not into tons of enemy encounters and confusing-as-hell dungeons (dare I say downright obnoxious later in the game), then you probably want to steer clear.

If I didn't already own the Wii U version, I would give it a try. But considering how short life is, and how many great RPG's are already out and on the horizon for Switch, I'm saving my money for Trials of Mana, and Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics.

Imagine getting upset that a game that was censored outside of Japan to begin with is still being censored. I'm getting this partially to spite those silly people who look for reasons to complain about a game they probably didn't want to play in the first place.

I'm not planning to rebuy the game--I own the Wii U version--but I sincerely hope more people get a chance to experience it. It was very fun and upbeat. Persona 5 for PS4 is better, but until that arrives on the Switch, this is the next best thing.

The game is pretty mediocore.While the combat system is amazing, it just isn't good enough to carry the rest of the game.

The dungeons are incrediblely tedious, the puzzles are fairly easy and consist mostly of walking to a point, flip a switch and walk back. It always feels like having to walk for an excessive ammount (with encounters everywhere ofcourse).

The sidequests are just laughably bad. You get the most rediculous reasons to kill 5 monsters in a dungeon. Other sidequests include running all around the city to find an item that they eventually don't want.Even when the world is about to end in the main story, they still ask you to check on a celebrity chef because he's been "acting strange" like you have nothing better to do. This really kills the immersiveness of the story.

Overal the game is still decent, just highly overrated. I love both Jpop and JRPG's, but the game was just to tedious for me to finish it.

@First_Amendment " "Don’t really give two hoots about censorship" yor the reason people suffer under Socalist Dictatorships like China ,North Korea,Cuba,Cambodia.I know you don't care about Freedom but people have the right to be perveted ,angry,and stupid as long as they don't hurt anyone else and you are infringing on that right."
Amen to that..

But also here something interesting if they want say Censorship is good why not censor COD or WWW and or the likes Those are also violent games and will make you go ape poop on other people in real life. Just watch those trying to trying to defend such games and have "two face" comments on it. Want to Censor skin flick then you better also Censor violent games as well MKIII and so on. Now you see why thinking your the Censorship Bureau doesn't quite add up now does it.

I have no reason to buy this. I still have my Wii U version and I have it patched to include the original content. And in all honesty, its better because the story fleshes out the idea more than what we got. I've played through both options and the Japanese version did better for character development. The theme is stay true to yourself and don't change just to seem more appealing. The US version sucked at that. It does bother me that it was censored but I am more upset our content sucked. It wasn't adjust to sell more it was altered to not "upset" people and that's censorship.

I've been considering picking up a Japanese Wii U so I'll just get the original version. Some of the changes are a bit weird to me, particularly outfits that were poorly re-textured and story changes which seem designed to cover up parts of the very culture which makes up the game's premise.

Maybe I'll pick up this version when it's cheap for the extra content, but I'm not a hardcore RPG fan so maybe not. I'm just interested in this game for the idol culture. I'm sure the hacker scene will just port the extra content to Wii U in a patch anyway.

Lot of people are not happy that this game is not being the SMTXFE they hoped for but in my opinion they absolutely make the right choice turning this in to its own game. SMT needs "M" rating for its demons alone but because FE was going to be involved there is no way they could kept the "M" rating. So we would have got was half-a** SMTXFE game with your typical convoluted story that always comes with crossover games.

This game isn’t worth buying again because it is still censored, and people that don’t care about censorship are part of the problem. This nonsense needs to stop. When will some of these companies understand that we don’t want them to act like our parent?

The game is much better than the haters make it out to be. It's quite fantastic.

What you need to know about this game - I've beaten it on WiiU

1. This game is persona lite. There is no day to day system. Well there is but it's not like Persona where you can only do a limited number of things each day. You can do whatever you want each day and you move on with the story when you want to.

2. There is no hundreds of personas or similar to catch and merge.

3. There is no English language option, well there was not on the WiiU. It's all japanese voice with English subtitles.

4. The music videos are the star of this game. Thankfully they are very well done. The songs themselves are also pretty good.

5. Apart from using a few Fire Emblem characters in the story, this game has no other connection to Fire Emblem.

6. The Switch port has quite a bit of new content.

7. The Switch port is the censored port. This is not a bad thing as in many respects the censored port is better than the uncensored port.Those complaining about the censorship need to grow up and appreciate the game for what it is.

8. 95% of all side quests in every RPG ever are boring. Saying TMS has boring side quests, well yeah that's mostly true but they are still fun to do. A lot of the quest outcomes are quite interesting to experience.

9. Better load times and frame rates on the Switch port. A good things as this was an issue on the WiiU port.

10. No special edition for the Switch port.The WiiU port has a few limited editions Two of them were:

As I am Australian I own the PAL one. I have to say the best part of it is the art book. It's really well done and the art in this game is really good.The sound selection CD well it's lacking all the songs in this game so I bought the full soundtrack from Amazon Japan. I don't think it's on sale there anymore so here's a photo of mine.https://i.imgur.com/bh0Uqwj.jpg

11. The only downside I found on the WiiU version is there is no way to replay the music videos whenever you want to until new game plus. I hope this is rectified on the Switch port as those music videos are good enough to rewatch and we should not have to wait till new game plus for it.

*****

It's a good game, very good in fact. It's quite niche though and will not sell well on Switch because of this. But if this is your thing, you'll totally like it.